Musings by Andora Brokaw

Musings & Such

Andora Brokaw lives at a ski area in Washington state with her partners and an assortment of pets. When not writing, she’s likely to be found with a crochet hook in her hand or skis on her feet.

Line of small snowflakes

  • 10/02/24 Meeting Transcript

    Snow Kiss: Excuse me? I was under the impression you were going to be revising me, but you seem to be NOT DOING THAT. What gives?

    Me: So, I missed a lot of goals last week due to a combination of things, including a deep concern about my mother’s hometown being destroyed by flooding and the fact it was several days before all my relatives were accounted for.

    I’d Rather Not Be Dead: Wait. Do you mean Spruce Pine? The town that inspired my setting was flooded???

    Me: And the entire region it’s in. Know that bridge Pine Bridge was named for? The real one’s gone now. And the fictitious one probably would be, too.

    Snow Kiss: Who the rot are you?

    Me: She’s one of the YA novels I wrote as Andrea Marie Brokaw. And don’t curse at your siblings, especially when they just got news like that. How would you feel if the inspiration for Niaretya fell victim to a natural disaster?

    Snow Kiss: It hasn’t though. Which means you’re sitting in a nice, safe house right now. From which you SHOULD BE WORKING ON ME.

    Me: I’ve only put you off for a week. I’m waiting on a beta who needed an extension anyway.

    Shadow Kiss Act 3: I’m okay with the part of the delay that was you being worried about people. But, you also created a new Scrivener project I noticed you working on.

    Me: Uh, yeah. So that’s a short story I’m describing as Polyamorous Lesbian Dragons in Space. I was going to rush through it to get into a critique group, but that got moved forward a week and there’s no way I’ll be ready. Which at least takes pressure off.

    Polyamorous Lesbian Dragons in Space: I’m a short story? Are you certain?

    Me: No, actually. You’re supposed to be, because I wanted to submit you to a short story anthology, but you seem bigger.

    Polyamorous Lesbian Dragons in Space: Really think I’m at least a novella…

    Me: We’ll see. I want to complete you as though you’re a short story and see if you feel rushed and incomplete before declaring you longer fiction. I’ve always been bad at short though. The first novel I ever wrote was supposed to be a short story, too.

    Act 3: So you can work on me this week if you’re not aiming for that critique group you mentioned, yesno?

    Me: It does allow me to shift the priority this week to you, yes. And if y’all will excuse me, I’d like to get on with that. It’s 1340 and all I’ve done is clean the house, talk to my bank, and have this little talk with you. I need to get that last scene in Chapter 25 replaced with something that still works. Toodles!

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    a line of purple snowflakes

  • Meet Kaz

    Happy Banned Books Week! As a writer, I clearly have opinions on banning books. (It’s BAD. Duh.) Another profession that generally comes with opinions on book bans is that of librarian. Which takes me to the first of a series on introducing my characters.

    An elf reads a book in a forest. (Why in a forest rather than a library or his living room? We have no way of knowing.)

    This is not my character. This is an image I yanked off of the Fantasy Flight Games site. It’s from the Lord of the Rings card game. You can tell it it isn’t my character because the color scheme is ALL wrong and this person’s hair is far too well behaved.

    Kaz is a secondary character in the first two Snow Kiss novels. At the start of Book 1, he’s a socially awkward librarian who hasn’t lived in our little mountain town for long enough to have true friends there despite his wide spread popularity with local kids, who feed off his enthusiasm for reading and respond well to the questions he asks about their opinions on books. He’s gradually pulled into the friends group at the center of the novels, even though a few characters have reservations based on the lengthy academic rambles he can’t help but deliver and his similarity to someone negative from the past.

    Kaz is described as a remarkably average looking elf with greyish blue coloring, standing out largely due to his fashion choices. Drawn to bright colors and bookish themes, he has a wardrobe full of decorated vests featuring things like flying books and children’s literary characters. And since his hair will attempt to take over the world if left to its own devices, he tames it daily with a vast array of barrettes shaped like books, iconic characters, and assorted animals.

    Kaz is a transplant from a distant province of the Ashareen Empire known for its religious conservativism, but to paraphrase one of his new friends, there’s a reason he lives so far away from his family. This is something I strongly relate to as one could easily say the same thing about my region of origin and why I’m as far from it as I can get within the continental United States.

    As I begin to think about what I want Book 3 to focus on, I’m strongly considering moving Kaz up to Main Character status to better explore the themes of moving past the toxic aspects of ones upbringing while perhaps holding on to the healthier parts of it.

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    a line of purple snowflakes

  • 9/25/2024 Meeting Transcript

    The words "Some makeovers require axes," next to the image of a blue axe

    Me: Hey, Shadow Kiss Act 1! How are you feeling?

    Act 1: Different. But in a good way. I really like parts of me.

    Me: Ideally, you’d like all of you, but it’s okay not to yet.

    Act 1: I’m not a rough draft anymore, though. Shouldn’t I be… Better?

    Me: Second drafts are nowhere close to final drafts. Don’t freak out over being a little unpolished still.

    Snow Kiss: If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know which draft of me we’re on and she’s about to attack me again.

    Me: It’s not like I’m beating you into submission, Snow Kiss. I’m applying makeovers to make you more fabulous.

    Snow Kiss: Sorry. I missed the fashion montage. All I noticed was the ax you’re holding.

    Me: Some makeovers require axes.

    Snow Kiss: You must have had terrifying sleepovers in middle school.

    Me: …No comment. But I promise I’m not going to leave you bleeding out on the floor.

    Snow Kiss: That’s not as reassuring as you think it is.

    Shadow Kiss: It really isn’t.

    Me: Shush, both of you. You’re distracting me from a speed run through Shadow Kiss Act 2.

    Act 2: Eeep.

    (Image created by me using an opensource clipart ax. Feel free to borrow it if you find it useful.)

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    a line of purple snowflakes

  • Let’s Default to Ethcial

    Let’s talk about the concept of ethical nonmonogamy.

    I spend a lot of time thinking about words. When I’m creating a rough draft, the goal is to tell the story as quickly as possible, and consequently I don’t spend too much time on any single word. But prior to publication, every word included in my manuscript will need to justify its existence.

    I’m not one of those people who will demand you never use adverbs to describe an action, and I certainly wouldn’t tell you to avoid adjectives. However, I would likely edit, “Mary slowly drank her brown coffee…” to the snappier, “Mary sipped coffee…” Sipping is a form of drinking always done slowly, most people only drink beverages belonging to them, and it’s reasonable to assume the reader knows what color coffee typically is. (Although I acknowledge that if they’re reading in some post-apocalyptic world following a coffee extinction event destroying society, then this may have been a mistake.)

    I mention all this to give you a context to understand why I see the words “ethical nonmonogamy” and object to the inclusion of “ethical.” What purpose does it serve? And while you’re thinking about that, how often have you seen someone reference unethical nonmonogamy? Not often, right?

    When people feel the need to clarify that the particular case of nonmonogamy under discussion is ethical, they’re feeding the prejudice that this isn’t the default. Personally? I practice nonmonogamy and don’t see any more reason to tack a superfluous “ethical” in there than I would if I were practicing a healthy and mutually agreed upon form of monogamy.

    There are ways to be unethically nonmonogamous, such as any time one party is forcing their will upon other parties like we frequently see in harem romances (see my rant on those if you missed it), but those are the cases we need to be clear about. It’s unethical nonmonogamy that is the rarity, so let’s stop implying it’s the standard. Pretty please?

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  • Meeting Transcript 9/18/2024

    Shadow Kiss, 116000 Words Rough Draft Completed 09/16/20224

    Shadow Kiss: Wait. You’re not done with me yet! Have you not seen my list of things to change in me?

    Me: I’m aware of the list. You may note that the graphic only claims to have completed the ROUGH DRAFT, not to have completed the novel. Also, if you examine yourself, you’ll see I already started on the Act 1 alterations.

    Act 1: Actually… All you did was rewrite the opening scene. Poorly. What the rot is up with all of this backstory you stuck in there?

    Me: It’s too slow. I realized that even while I was writing it. What I was doing was exploring that history so I can cut all those paragraphs but reference the events in them later.

    Act 1: You wrote it to cut it? That makes zero sense, Andy. But, whatever. You do you, girl.

    Me: It made sense to me. Also, it helped me see that I started in the wrong place. It wasn’t just all the added backstory that’s the problem, but all the rumination. I’ll be rewriting Ch 1, Scene 1 again today. In a way that is not only more active but which lets me cut Ch 1, Scene 2 and replace it with something snappier.

    Act 1: So you’re ripping me to pieces? I thought you were just removing the fourth POV.

    Me: I have two weeks before my beta readers’ deadline. I could in theory completely rewrite you from scratch in that time.

    Shadow Kiss: The other acts have asked me to point out that any significant alterations to Act 1 will impact them. Two weeks is not enough time to rewrite all of me.

    Me: It isn’t. I’m not anticipating any changes THAT big, though.

    Shadow Kiss: Doesn’t mean you won’t make them.

    Me: True. But I’ll decide when I’ve gotten through Act 1 if it’s better to keep going and postpone the next revision of Snow Kiss or to hop over to it. Depending on the feedback from my remaining betas, I could wind up changing something there that could mean I have to rewrite vast swaths of you anyway. If I’m going to do that, I’ll definitely pop back to do it before messing with the rest of you.

    Shadow Kiss: I guess that’s fair. But please get Act 1 redone. I feel itchy knowing changes are coming but not what they are.

    Me: On it!

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